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Saturday, March 15, 2014

Tonight begins the celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim. Like so many Jewish holidays, Purim is an inconvenient fit for liberal clergy and their dimwitted parishioners who insist that Jewish values consist of the liberal trinity of environmentalism, abortion and social justice.

Three Jewish holidays end with mass bloodshed, not with reconciliation commissions. There is no peace process conducted with Haman, the chief villain of the Purim story.

No one tries to understand his point of view or figure out how much bowing he will accept in exchange for calling off the genocide. Instead he and his fellow conspirators must die.

Haman is a zero sum villain who responds to a failure to submit with genocide. The response to him is equally zero sum. Those who try to kill
you, deserve what's coming to them. It may be an alien notion to the preachers who try to pass off liberal values as Jewish values, but it is a reminder that real Jewish values are not a suicide pact or a soppy tale of moral ambiguity and bleeding heart empathy for genocidal monsters.

Jewish holidays mark historical events by
testifying to a G-d of history who is less concerned with feelings and
tolerance, than with justice and truth.

Moshe, the Maccabees and Mordechai don't seem like progressive role
models, not even if you rebrand them as community organizers fighting prejudice. There is something relentlessly
bloody-minded about them. They walk through the corpses
of their enemies with no regrets or apologetic winces. They don't seem to
want to make the world a better place, all they really do is stand up
for their own people in a regrettable show of "tribalism" that perpetuates a "cycle of violence".

Purim began when a narrow-minded fanatic refused to bow to
the Grand Vizier of a multicultural empire. Jewish leaders hurriedly reassured him that this fanatic was in no way representative of their
values of tolerance and appeasement. Hadn't they attended the feast
where the sacred vessels of their own people were used to serve spirits to the mob? Rather than anticipating the return to their land
at the end of the prophesied seventy year period of exile, they had cheered
the brutish tyrant and made Sushan, his capital, into their new holy
city.

The illusion of
history is that every age brings with it the end of history, a new age
whose awesome achievements break with the past and usher in a boundless
future. And then the walls come crashing down and the new era of history
ends up buried under the rubble of time.

History never ends. That is the lesson of the Holocaust, of Purim and of
countless other horrifying intrusions of the old into the new. The
shining new era that begins with grand public spectacles and displays of
the power and might of an empire, ends with corpses and men and women
fighting and running for their lives.

The Jewish people, break down into Jews and New Age Jews.

The Jews wandered a meandering course through history using
ancient maps and concerning themselves with a past that modern people
dismissed as myth and legend. The New Age Jews saw a new era of history that made all those old moldy beliefs completely
irrelevant. History had ended and a new age had begun. How could they be expected to take a few fairy tales retold by
barbarians seriously? Such things weren't for enlightened people who
were witnessing the end of history.

The old Jews know what the New Age Jews do not, that history has not
ended, that the past is still with us and that it has sharp teeth. They
know that Man has not changed, that his sophistication is still only a
shell and that sooner or later the shell cracks. If it does not crack
from within, then it is cracked from without. While the New Age Jews
sneer at the Holocaust obsession, Jews know that the past in all its
awful terrors is a map and that forgetting it carries a terrible price.

Those who feel time in their bones know the patterns of history and can never lose themselves in one age or fall
into the fallacy of a new era. They know that there is nothing new under
the sun. Machines may come and go, but the world is a broken place
because the hearts of men have not turned from their ways. And so they
remember that every age carries within it the seeds of its ruin. They
witness the ruin, climb out of the rubble and move on.

Liberal pieties embrace the new age, fixate on a final transformative
era of history at the hands of messiahs who promise to make the world into a better place.
Clergy who preach the cant of Tikkun Olam, whose climactic religious
holiday of the year is Martin Luther King Day cannot meaningfully cope with that history. Their tattered scraps of philosophy that they mistake for a religion
has no room in it for the
bloody-minded men who stride through history without saving the whales.

Purim, a holiday preceded by a fast kept by the men going into battle
and their loved ones, is not about forgiving your enemies, progressive
taxation or coming out of the closet. It is about survival. Not mere
survival, but the skin of the teeth sense of how close we came, that
moment of revelation which pulls back the curtains of the material world
and reminds us of the impossibility of our survival under all the
ordinary rules of the world that new ages are founded on. It reminds us
that behind the brick and mortar of the material world is a force that breaks apart history, that saves us when we should have died, that has entrusted us
with a mission. It reminds us of what the world is and reminds us of
Itself and of what we are.

When
you stand on the edge of death, life is a revelation. It is not our
deaths under the Egyptian sun, the blades and bullets of a thousand
empires and kingdoms, or the ovens of Dachau that we are obsessed with.
It is that moment of survival. The revelation that even amid the horrors
of all that we have witnessed and the terrible things that we had to do
to survive, we have risen out of the ground, watched the flesh cover
our bones and stood alive again upon the earth. Every time we survive,
we are reminded of the fragility of the material world and of our enemies who
wielding every power and trick, have failed to destroy us. Each time we
rise, we transcend the world, in confronting our dead, we confront our
immortality.

It is not a purely joyous experience. The day of Purim is preceded by a
day of fasting. Before the celebration comes a day of battle as the
struggle to survive, the long decline into the abyss, the final
desperate hours, suddenly give way to the upheaval of an impossible
salvation. We remember the pain, the sense of the grave closing over us,
the bodies lying everywhere, the certainty that we will be next.

We
accept the hopelessness of our situation and then we walk out of the
grave and praising G-d, sit down to the feast.

This is Jewish history. It is an alien one to the New Age Jew who clings
tightly to the new era and its rules, to its pieties and its mores, who
scowls at the old ones for refusing to come and join the imperial
festivities where the vessels of the temple are used to serve drinks and
the mob toasts that the seventy years have come and gone, and still there is
no chance of the Jews returning to their Jerusalem and reclaiming the
lost history.

"The past is the past," says the New Age Jew. "The past is
the present is the future," says the Jew.

The feast of the New Age is the celebration of the end of history, a
golden time with an unlimited bounty for all, where the wine
and the free health care will never run out, where everyone will live
together under one government in perfect brotherhood for all time. Many
Jews are drawn to this feast, its golden vessels, its vast bounty and
its glorious ideals. But then the Grand Vizier begins to speak and some of them grow uneasy for though he speaks soothing
words, they sense that he is a monster.

They don't always know how they know it, but the nagging feeling creeps into them that there is something
rotten at the heart of this new age.

Most of them still bow to him, touching their heads to the floor, some
even celebrate his vision. They assure others that he is
our friend, the only man who can realize the promise of this age, a
wise and noble leader whose vision of change brings new hope. But one or
two stay away from the feast and refuse to bow to him. Instead they
look to Jerusalem, to where the battle between good and evil was once
fought, and where it will be fought again. They know him for what he is.

The Grand Vizier knows that he must destroy them, must destroy them all,
because they have seen through what he is, and through
the shallow trappings of the golden age of fools. They know that there
is more to the world than the might of men and the cornucopias of kings.
They know that he is not all-powerful and when he looks at them, a
scowl wrinkles his face, because now he knows it too.

So
he casts a lot, random chance in a random world where chance is supreme
and the whim of every ruler outweighs the weight of history. The bills
are signed, the laws are passed, the decrees go out, the officers from
the vast imperial bureaucracy are assigned to inform every citizen that
their new age will be inaugurated with blood. A people who are not a
proper part of the multicultural empire of laws must be wiped out in a
properly democratic fashion.

Crowdsourced genocide.

And then the Grand Vizier ends up dangling from a rope, the tanks break
through to Berlin, the chariots fall into the sea, the mustachioed
dictator dies in a bedroom outside Moscow his clothes soaked in his own
urine-- and everything has gone completely wrong.

It's an old story and a new story. We tell it over and over again
because it is always happening. It is our story and the story of the
world. It is the story we have accepted from our parents and it is the
story that we will pass on to our children. It is the story of the blood
sacrifice of the New Age that goes wrong. The sacrifice survives,
bloodied and scarred, while the New Age goes down to ruin.

Once again we are the sacrifice to be slaughtered on the altar of peace with the Muslim world, of an age of global
government and the brotherhood of man for which only a few million people need to die. The knife is
sharpened, the Grand Vizier and his aides smile, and the time is almost
here. But it is not here yet. Now we sit down to hear the Megillah and
remember how the story always ends.

50
comments:

112
said...

As always, a startlingly clear view of reality, with no coddling about the horrors to come, but a powerful message of hope. Mr. Greenfield, why are you not running for office?

"The old Jews know what the New Age Jews do not, that history has not ended, that the past is still with us and that it has sharp teeth. They know that Man has not changed, that his sophistication is still only a shell and that sooner or later the shell cracks. If it does not crack from within, then it is cracked from without. While the New Age Jews sneer at the Holocaust obsession, Jews know that the past in all its awful terrors is a map and that forgetting it carries a terrible price."

Most Excellent Article, Relevant and Timeless, It is My Faith in a G-D I cannot see that reveals Truth to those who seek Him, He is still on His throne, and there is nothing new under the Sun. And Yes, There will be weeping and Knashing of Teeth. Keep up the good work Daniel.

I'm not sure that your categorization of Jews and New Age Jews works. What you call Jews are, in this era, better called Zionists -- Jews who believe that their salvation lies in their own efforts, or in God plus their own efforts, but not in God alone. Over the centuries, the Jews thought the route to survival (as a people, not always as individuals) was to bend, so as not to break. They thought themselves too powerless to fight back, other than in those unusual circumstances when God created conditions such as those at the end of the Megillah. Haman loses his balance and lands on Esther's bed just as the king walks into the room -- and the rest is history.

The ultra-Orthodox response to the Holocaust shows that the Jews and the New Age Jews aren't that different after all. They both pray for hope and change, and they both want the czar to smile on them, even though they both know that the difference between a smile and a snarl is not in their hands.

There's a Second Amendment lesson in the story of Purim as well; In America we are blessed with the freedom to defend ourselves without begging permission from the government. It is not a freedom we should take lightly or rush to surrender.

Israel is in a similar position internationally- much of the world believes that she should go begging to Kings of the World for permission to fight back when attacked.

Every single human being must make the choice, life versus death. If you love life, you choosethe life nourishing values of freedom and individual rights.

If you love death, there are all kinds of groups to join, read to hide out in, because you are too cowardly to face life on your own.

Groups that revel in slavery and death, like the Nazis, the Communists, the Islamics, will welcome you to the mindless anonymity of their vicious murdering hordes and remove that burden you find so heavy, thinking for yourself.

All you give up is your integrity, your sense of self worth, and your humanity in the real sense of being human.

Eric--I agree with you on the Secondment Amendment. I don't know if you consider the Amendments in ascending or descending order if one can even be ranked as more important than the other but IMO the First and Second are intertwined.

The First Amendment is first IMO for good reason. It protects our right to think and speak freely and express those beliefs in whatever forum we chose. The right of assembly, the freedom of religion.

Those rights can be dissolved, chipped away at so easily, especially the rights to think (which is why enslaved black Americans were not allowed to read under penalty of death).

A thinking person is a dangerous person in the eyes of a dictator or a regime along those lines.

History has proven that the only option for fighting for this fundemental right is force.

The Secondment Amendment keeps that option available for us. Not only to protect our homes but our very lives.

Purim Sameyach, Daniel - you're dead right, as usual, remember at that time, and 70 years previously where Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were also forced into the multiculturalism of their day and overcame - miracles seemed 'just a distant story', 70ish years later at the casting of the lots, but the few who remembered made a difference in waking those who succumbed to multiculturalism and celebrating diversity and its lie.

As you state, people don't change, the few, in Purim's case, just 2 people made a great difference and even people chose Ha Shem from this victory.

I believe, Hannukah and Purim is how it all ends in the timeframe of the Chaggim.

In the meantime, we can all do little things which make a big difference e.g challenge everything, especially what your kids are learning, don't just moan about it, talk to the teacher, give evidence of the real history: mis-information smacks of National Socialist propaganda.

We should all be challenging the term "Palestinian" and demand to make them state what is on their passports - this will be someone's job soon to change all those country of origin on passports from "Jordanian" and "Egyptian" to the lie, "Palestinian".

As you enjoy your wine, remember the sweet stuff, Palwins, it means Palestinian Wine, which has been exported from Carmel since the late 1880s, well before the term "Palestinian" was used for an Arab circ 1970s kate b

This is the most overwrought and pretentious piece of writing I have read in months. For the love of god, "A force that breaks apart the towers of history, that saves us when we should have died, that has entrusted us with a mission. It reminds us of what the world is and reminds us of Itself and of what we are." What the hell does that even mean? It's eloquent, poetic even, but so vague as to be utterly free of content.

Your thesis seems to be "Because a bunch of awful stuff happened to Jews over the course of history, Zionists and Israel should be allowed to be as brutal as they need to be. Also, Obama is Hamen is Hitler is Stalin, or something?" (Hell, that sums up the whole thing, doesn't it? I could be your editor!) As if every group and nationality's history isn't filled with outrages. Do Native Americans get to rise up and kick us out now? How about the Poles? Historically, they haven't been treated very well either. By your rule, do they get to massacre Russians? You're like Brecht crying out "embrace the butcher!" Except you, like he, would never have the bravery to take up the arms you so enthusiastically endorse. You would only write about it, poorly.

Your problem, and the problem with writers like you, is that you have no sense of scale or proportion. It isn't enough for you to disagree with someone, you create an image of them as the worst people imaginable. Raising the marginal income tax on high earners from 36% to 39% isn't just a disagreeable policy, it's tyranny! Being a liberal Jew means you are (by what you ineptly wrote above) a collaborator, in cahoots on the genocide of Jews!

In the name of all that is holy, hire an editor, and maybe try reading something or speaking with someone who disagrees with you. If you can do this without comparing the person to Hitler in a rambling, incoherent essay, then Mazal tov, you've made progress.

1. That line is talking about G-d. And that the force of near-annihilation gets you to see the world clearly, and breaks down the illusions you have about it. Methinks your ability to think critically is free of content.

2. Israel is not brutal. They are fighting people that cut clitorises off of their little girls, and strap their little boys with guns and bombs to be a terrorist army. And rape people. And attack cars on the highway with rocks. And shoot innocent people. Brutality would be to destroy the countries they come from, like Egypt and Lebanon. Instead, they let them stay and walk over everyone, while giving them food, electricity and housing, and defend them to the death.

3. Obama, if listened to, such as his demands to return to suicide borders, would cause more death than Haman could have.

4. Native Americans are welcome to rise up and kick out small pox and alcohol. Those kill more than 90% of the native American population. With no immunity to small pox, it's a wonder that any survived.

5. The Poles are no longer under Soviet domination. When the Soviets were ruining their country and controlling their lives, it would have been a momentous blessing to humanity if they had.

6. He never advocated killing the Arabs, though I personally tend to favor it over expulsion, because they will without a shadow of a doubt do everything to create a new holocaust no matter where they are.

7. There Arabs were not there first. Historically, obviously the land belongs to the Jews. It is the Jewish homeland, and after they were kicked out, they still managed to maintain a steady population, which was regularly wiped out by Arabs and crusaders. In the 1800s, Jews starting coming in the masses, and there was nothing there. The Arabs that might be found there were nomadas that moved through the desert, and didn't much care or Israel or many other borders, they simply moved from place to place. There was no steady Arab population. The Jews created economic opportunities, and despite the league of nations proposal to create a JEWISH homeland in modern Israel AND "Jordan", the British wanted to suck up to their Arab friends, and gave them Jordan, while allowing massive illegal Arab immigration into the land of Israel, and keeping Jews from entering. This also happened during the holocaust. The Arab illegal immigrants today call themselves "Palestinians" because what better way to wipe out a race (and they have absolutely no hang-ups about saying that that is exactly what they want to do) then to create a race that's supposed to replace it? So long as the actual race exists, the other race can say it is being oppressed, since the other exists and stole their land and identity, which is why they should be wiped out

8. Daniel Greenfield is a better writer than you could hope any one of your great grandchildren to be in a thousand generations.

9. Stop making straw men arguments. The income tax hikes proposed by Barack Hussein Osama were much higher, and the purpose is redistribution to those that don't work, encouraging them not to work, and making them dependent on the government, while crippling the workers and encouraging them to do the same, until they are dependent on the government as well. Things have consequences. If you are unable to see past tomorrow, that's your problem, but keep your tiny brain and giant mouth away from those that are.

10. Daniel Greenfiel is a phenomenal writer. The fact that you don't notice that is the greatest point that everything you say is clueless, though anything you say serves the same purpose.

11. Liberal Jews aren't necessarily traitors, many are just immoral and only hurt themselves. If they vote for Barack Hussein Osama, then they are.

12. Don't pretend you know of anything holy.

13. This blog is better written and more factual than the New York times. No one has mentioned Hitler but you, and we're Jews here, and don't want to think about that creature (YSV). Shame on you. Please hire an editor who is familiar with the "backspace" button for yourself.

Your article: Conservatives are the same as liberal elites, and both read the New York times. They just are the ones that hate their opponents, and read from less newsources.

I've never seen anything so narrow-minded and shallow. The problem with liberals is they always seem to respond to the arguments they make about conservatives, instead of their arguments. What a retard. Going from reading this to that is like reading a high school play after a Greek or French epic.

And yes, the Caananites were there first. If their child sacrificing murderous society was still around today, the world would look a lot more like hell. Imagine Saudi Arabia, but everywhere. Their deaths saved millions, and ensured the planet would advance instead of being stuck in vile violent idolatrous traditions.

Regardless, the one true G-d gave us that land and it's ours. Try your best not to scoff at that; historically, it's not a really good idea.

Also, anonymous coward, please don't confuse republicans with conservatives. Chris Christie, I'm certain, attends all the cocktail parties possible, but he's as conservative as John Mccain or Bush Sr., which is not conservative.

Lastly (BTW, after your "firstly", what's secondly, I made 13 points, and you have 1) denounce the Arabs for saying they want to exterminate the Jews before you denounce me, they started it, and I'm only making the sane response. If that's what they want, what do you suppose will change their mind? Indoor toilets?

My,My, How amusing, when "Truth" ruffles the feathers of "Unbelievers". Yes, there is a G-D,A "Creator", Who says, "All Your (MAN) Wisdom is Foolishness". How Humbling,irreconcillable to the Liberal who fancies themselves "Educated".Gotta hand it to You Daniel. Thanks Again.

I just love the saying, “You know you’re over the target when the flak is bad.” And the flak spouted earlier by Anonymous is really bad.

For most atheists and secular progressives (ASP’s) no one else meets their standards and no one says it correctly because of course they know best – even if what is said is epic.

Not everyone on this site is a Jew. I am an evangelical Christian and Daniel is not only one of the top writers in America, he is one of our more versatile and brilliant thinkers.

This article is one man’s heartfelt and pure encapsulation of the ignorance and timeless viciousness of fallen man, of pain and defeat, of overcoming and triumph, and it comes from a spiritual depth that obviously connects his heart to the flow of history…something difficult to do without empathy and a powerful belief in rectification and a glorious Creator.

The fact a Jew wrote about Jewish struggle on a Jewish holiday is puzzling to Anonymous.

Why Daniel didn’t write about Native Americans, or Poles, or even Groundhog Day on this sacred Jewish remembrance will now remain a mystery.

To not understand what Daniel wrote here is to live in a fog.

That lack of understanding is why too many Christians support Israel only because they feel it’s needed to fulfill Scripture. Or why anti-Semitic fringe groups like CATC, white supremacy Bible re-writers, and self-hating secular Jews will never awaken - because what they feel is more important than what G-d has said.

"Many Jews are drawn to this feast, its golden vessels, its vast bounty and its glorious ideals. But then the Grand Vizier begins to speak and some of them grow uneasy for though he speaks soothing words, they sense that he is a monster.

They don't always know how they know it, but the nagging feeling creeps into them that there is something rotten at the heart of this new age."

Which describes perfectly what Mark Zuckerberg must have felt after talking to the Obama in a personal phone conversation complaining about NSA violating Facebook privacy, suddenly realizing his leader of choice was not going to cut him any favors.

Surely that had to be a "Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal" moment for Mr. Zuckerberg.

112 re: "we're Jews here".. Not necessarily, some of us value Daniel's eloquence, wisdom and faith. Millions of non Jews celebrate and support Israel too. With respect, don't lose sight of the forest by looking at the trees.sophie

"Those who try to kill you, deserve what's coming to them. It may be an alien notion to the preachers who try to pass off liberal values as Jewish values, but it is a reminder that real Jewish values are not a suicide pact or a soppy tale of moral ambiguity and bleeding heart empathy for genocidal monsters."

Well Daniel, you proved me somewhat wrong to doubt you last month. Let me recount for you a short interchange I had with a friend (with his permission) via instant message this morning. You do not have to let this post, but I wanted to let you know that as long as you are willing to fight, then I was wrong to doubt you.

Me: Here's a post that high chances you'll approve: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-ages-of-purim.html Sent at 7:46 AM on Sunday

Me: "New Age Jews" have been around from the beginning.

Scoffer: Indeed. I like the telling of the story, and the perspectiveit certainly isn't put forth like that in the "Modern" world.

me: I'd love to think that the last words of this comment I left for Greenfield helped prompt this post "Someone like Daniel here may understand this instinctively, but for any number of reasons unknown to us has not addressed it directly. As a young boy at Purim, he probably cranked his grogger energetically. Today: not so much. "LOL

I left that missive for him while commending another commenter on Feb 20 of this year.

However, it turns out this is a recycled post from Feb 2013 (though it carries the March 14 2104 date and does not say so), so my previous comment maybe wasn't so inspiring as I thought. I'm sorry Daniel for my own scoffing.

Scoffer: "Cranked his grogger" still sounds like a euphemism for masturbation

me: The boys who do it are much too young -- at least in my time;and it is literally what is done with the noise makerSo get your mind out of the gutter, just this once. LOL

me: OTOH, if what is taught the young boys that all one has to do is make a lot of noise, then indeed it IS as you suggest. So, there is room for your crack too. LOL

It has got to be more than that.

Scoffer: Never forget, I'm always right, even when I'm wrong

me: LOL

Scoffer: lol

me: indeed, yours is indeed a useful insight: "that's ok for now boys; but there comes a time when the name you so fervently blot out today must be done for real."There's your saving grace.

We have to always be prepared not to just to make noise but to fight back, risking our own blood as we shed those of our enemies.

A "one true god" or not, the point an editor would have helped keep front and centered is "The meek will not inherit the Earth". They will find they are being buried in it, before their time. Beasts fear strength; so do bullies.Regards,

Very powerful...brilliantly written, inspiring and scary in today's climate.While intellectual sophistry could permit the comment:"How could they be expected to take a few fairy tales retold by barbarians seriously? Such things weren't for enlightened people who were witnessing the end of history."How does it simultaneously jibe with the "tolerance" shown to the barbaric and primitive cult of islam? Sell gay marriage while ignoring the stoning of homosexuals? Don't use "inflammatory" terms like "radical" while they butcher innocent women and children?In what mental sewer can these things exist as "rational?"

112 wins by a landslide over Anonymous. You took the words from my mouth.Anonymous is the kind of Judenrat quisling that got millions killed (over and over again, as Daniel points out.)While I'm virtually certain he wasn't Jewish, a Sam Adams quote rather sums up my thoughts towards Anonymous:"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

I am continuously appalled as I read the news and it seems to me that the continuing reports of anti-Semitism go virtuously unnoticed by the so called “mainstream media”. Ah, but I seem to have lived too long, this world has gone to such extremes as to seem unrecognizable in it’s incivility to me!! Is it too late for this country – the world to WAKE UP before it is too late??!! The evil that is Islam has so slowly crept into our society that it is truly frightening!! Yet I see NO true leader in sight . . . and I am truly afraid for our children. Daniel – I enjoy your writings . . . if only they can awaken all those who have the power to actually DO something!!!

Yishar kochachah! A well written and incisive comment on Hag Purim (some of us in Israel do call this a chag). BTW, I believe it is said that when the Mashiach does come and the existing holidays and fasts will be superceded by the celebrations of those days to come, only the "Fast of Esther" and Purim will remain as eternal testimony to the history of that period. Perhaps, exactly because of Mr. Greenfield's understanding of the centrality of the events in the history of the Jewish People. As far as the New Age Jew (both in the Diaspora and here in Israel) is concerned: In the past 29 years of my living in Israel, we have heard accusations made of "messianic" settlers and right wingers. This is one of the recurring demagogic claims of those who are against our living here as a fulfillment of the ancient, Divine promise and their commitment to living in the whole of the Land of Israel and building it. Mr. Greenfield, in the Purim spirit of "nahafokh hu" , turns this on its head, correctly, and shows that the New Age Jew and the left wing Zionist factions here are the real "messianics". They claim that human nature and the world have changed (for the better) and that history has ended as we know it. (The same demagoguery was used by the Soviet propaganda campaign, in those very words: "The new [socialist] man" was their name for it.) Purim comes along, as Mr. Greenfield so bitingly writes, and shows that to be nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. May we all merit to see the ultimate Deliverance of the Jewish People in their land and the real peace that will come with it to the world.